Expand<\/a><\/p>\nWhile attending San Pedro High School, Thomas\u2019 athletic ability was noted by the school\u2019s football coach, Carl Haney, who encouraged him to participate in sports, including boxing. Thomas remained a boxing fan his entire life.<\/p>\n
He also acquired the nickname \u201cSnake Oil,\u201d for a rubdown compound for athletes that he made and sold while in high school. He became an Ephebian, joining the organization that valued youth education and social service.<\/p>\n
He was granted a scholarship to the University of Santa Clara upon graduating in 1928. He earned his bachelor\u2019s degree there in philosophy in 1932. He earned his law degree from Loyola University in 1936 \u2014 but decided not to practice law.<\/p>\n
Instead, he worked for French Sardine, the Terminal Island company that later became Star-Kist Tuna, and also did some lobbying in Sacramento for the fishing industry. His talents were recognized by executives at French Sardine, who encouraged him to run for state Assembly in 1940.<\/p>\n
Thomas, a lifelong San Pedro booster, ran on the idea that the town should secede from the city of Los Angeles and take back the port, claiming that the big city 22 miles to the north often ignored Pedro\u2019s unique needs.<\/p>\n
He pointed to the 32 years it took the city to make the Municipal Ferry between San Pedro and Terminal Island a reality. The ferryboat moving workers to and from their jobs on Terminal Island opened in 1941; San Pedro became part of Los Angeles in 1909.<\/p>\n
Local voters were in tune with Thomas\u2019 ideas, and he won the 68th Assembly District seat by a margin of more than three-to-one in the Nov. 5 election.<\/p>\n
He immediately joined several Assembly committees, most notably the Pacific Marine Fisheries Commission. He served as an advocate for the fishing industry for the rest of his tenure.<\/p>\n
Speaking of that tenure, it would become, and remains at 38 years, the longest term of service in California State Assembly history. He won 19 consecutive two-year terms there before losing the seat to Gerald Felando in 1978.<\/p>\n
His most memorable accomplishment turned out to be the $21 million, 6,050-foot suspension bridge across the port\u2019s main channel that bears his name. The Vincent Thomas Bridge opened to traffic on Nov. 15, 1963.<\/p>\n
Detractors called it a boondoggle and \u201cthe bridge to nowhere\u201d during Thomas\u2019 yearslong struggle to get it built. In the end, however, collected tolls from bridge users paid for the bridge after 21 years instead of the projected 40 years.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t always planned as a bridge, though. Ever since the early 1920s, the prevailing opinion was that the project connecting San Pedro to Terminal Island would consist of tunnels under the main channel, not a bridge over it.<\/p>\n
Legislation to build the underground passage was first proposed in 1938, but failed to advance. Thomas authored a series of bills from 1948 to 1957, paving the way for tunnel construction. After they all had passed, state engineers pointed out to Thomas that a bridge over the channel wouldn\u2019t cost much more than funding the tunnels. By 1958, he\u2019d pivoted, launching the bridge plan instead.<\/p>\n
In 1961, the state authorized naming the span \u201cThe Vincent Thomas Bridge,\u201d after its longtime champion, a rare case of naming a government structure after a still-living person. The bridge is currently undergoing a roadway refurbishing project estimated to cost $706 million.<\/p>\n
The building of the bridge also led to the extension of the 110 Freeway further into San Pedro in order to link it to the bridge. The 110 was originally planned to end at Pacific Coast Highway.<\/p>\n
Thomas was disappointed and surprised by his 1980 loss to Felando. He had hoped to complete 40 years of service in the Assembly, but had to settle for 38.<\/p>\n
Vincent Thomas died of a heart attack at 1:10 a.m. on Jan. 31, 1980. He was 72. He was survived by Mary DiCarlo of the DiCarlo Bakery family, whom he had married in 1947, and their two children, Mary and Vincent Jr.<\/p>\n
Following his death, tributes to him and his nearly four decades of public service poured in from around the state and from then-President Ronald Reagan. More than 1,000 people packed Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church for his funeral.<\/p>\n
One of Thomas\u2019s many accomplishments was the upgrading of boxing industry conditions in the state, and the provision of pension benefits for its practitioners. At the time of his death, he was working on the establishment of a local boxing museum.<\/p>\n
Sources: Daily Breeze archives. San Pedro News Pilot archives. \u201cThe Vincent Thomas Bridge: San Pedro\u2019s \u2018Golden Gate,\u2019\u201d San Pedro Bay Historical Society, 1988. 48 pages. Wikipedia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Vincent Thomas was 16, he used his boxing skills \u2013 he earned $2.50 per fight \u2013 to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[23,131,133,132,40346],"class_list":["post-112697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-local-news","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-south-bay-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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